the tank,” My finger found the post of the safety on my rifle, the muscle tensed feeling the pressure it would take to click it off.
In the starlight, Joshua's features looked etched against the obsidian stalks of rice. His mouth was taut under his reflective glasses, the corners of his thin lips drew down toward his angled jaw—the skin along his wide forehead creasing. He kept his short charcoal-colored hair combed up, away from his face, “Amcorp doesn't pay us enough.”
“At least they pay us,” I shifted my grip on the rifle, checking that the laser sight wasn't covered in mud, “I heard those Wescorp guys are getting IOUs.”
There was a team of Wescorp soldiers dug into the rice field at our flank. When I strained my eyes, I could see their hunched shapes in the mud a few dozen rows of rice away.
“Yeah, but they get those turtlenecks too—those are cool,” Joshua touched a silver button along the rim of his glasses, “Thermal shows a detail of soldiers around that walking tank. I have a feeling they don't want to tell us how the Bagaha river is this time of year.”
“Let's go over and ask anyway,” I pulled my elbows into my knees and started a slow walking crouch toward the base of the hill. At my back, I could hear Joshua muttering into his com, probably giving the order to the Wescorp soldiers, warning them about the sniper. The two of us kept close to the slant in the land, keeping our shadows to the darkest part of the hillside. The walking tank had begun its crawl down the opposite side, silhouetted three-toed legs shifting and clamping into the mud as it went.
The shadows of the Nepalese soldiers were maintaining a ring around the tank, hefting rifles and trudging the hillside. The night was broken with a short burst of gunfire, the muzzle flash catching my attention from the edge of my vision. A figure near the tank collapsed as something dark sprayed into the air from his back.
“Team four, do not engage,” Joshua put a muddy hand against the earbud that tethered to his glasses. His voice was sharp and firm but he maintained a whisper.
The hillside lit with return gunfire, like a swarm of angry fireflies, the reports from the rifles echoing over the rice field. I stood from my crouched stance and tried my best to run in the ankle-deep mud. A handful of soldiers detached from the rear of the tank, running toward us along the hill as they tried to steady their rifles. Their faces lit in a strobe against their muzzle flashes, showing the ventilated masks of their helmets like burst photos from a camera. The rounds whistled by my ears or landed with squelches in the mud.
Joshua painted a soldier with his laser sight before spraying him with rounds that landed in his chest. I painted another, the shaking red dot finding the reflective visor of a Nepalese mask. I squeezed the trigger as the bullets whizzed and struck their mark—shattering glass and plastic as the soldier fell forward into the mud.
Behind them the walking tank had swiveled its body to angle down the hill, setting the rear set of legs back and bent like shock absorbers. The main gun tracked down, the mechanism clicking like a gear as it matched the angle. The gun roared with a boom that washed over me like a concussive force, fire spraying in a spiral pattern from the barrel's vents. A luminescent shell streaked across the darkened hillside like a comet until it struck the rice field. The point of impact erupted in blazing light, throwing dirt and mud and rice stalks into the air. The Wescorp soldiers lay near the crater, sprawled in the mud, a few shapes clawing at the ground to get away.
Joshua and I had cleared the few soldiers that had rushed us. Many of the other Nepalese had started down the shadowed hill—bursts of gunfire as they picked off stragglers that had survived the blast. We approached the rear of the tank, Joshua eliminating a sentry near the access hatch with a combat knife he drove under the soldier's mask.
I used the stock of my rifle to shatter a dome camera on the tank's turret as Joshua scrambled up the armored skirt. The walking tank was only a little taller than I was, but the difference would make Joshua an easier target even in the shadowed night. I stayed on the ground, pivoting with my rifle to ensure no soldiers had sighted him. He teetered as the turret ring spun and grasped the housing of the searchlight to keep his footing. He unhooked a cylinder of explosive gel from his vest and wedged it into place near the access hatch, pulling the pin and crouching away. The cylinder exploded with a sound like a bowling ball flung into a dumpster. The force of the grenade had blown the hinges on the hatch. He pried the shattered hatch away with his rifle stock and sprayed shots into the opening.
The air near me burst with a sound like a hollow drum collapsing in on itself. The force of it made me stumble, catching the edge of the tank's armored skirt with one hand. Joshua's leg flung back and he tumbled to the ground, striking the back of his head on the thick robotic joint of a tank leg as he fell. A deep curved section of his quadriceps muscle had been torn away, blood flowing black in the starlight. He would need muscle-regrowth therapy, but he would live. I applied a clean piece of fabric from my pack and cinched a leather belt over it for a tourniquet.
The water tower was still a dark shadow at the edge of the village. I figured the rail gun had missed him, the air vacuum in the projectile's wake had done the damage. If a round from the gun had hit him directly, there wouldn't have been much left.
The shadowed figures of the Nepalese soldiers were moving back up the hillside, probably having heard the grenade and the gunshots. Joshua was breathing but he wasn't moving. The blow to his head must have knocked him cold. We needed a distraction, something to cover a withdrawal.
I took the com headset from Joshua's glasses. It could send and receive a wireless signal and that was all I needed it to do. I took my mobile and paired the signal to the com, sending it a hacked script that would repeat a single line of code indefinitely. I tapped into my mobile to find the tank's wireless control signal and routed the line of code to it. I dropped the com headset into the open hatch of the tank and started the script.
The engine groaned from its compartment and the legs picked up, the walking tank crawling through the dark mud and rice like a huge black spider. The Nepalese soldiers stopped at the foot of the grassy hill, one of them shouting something and pointing at the tank. They fired assault rifles that did little to pierce the tank's armor and began to chase it into the rice field.
I slung Joshua's arm over my neck and dragged him away from the hillside. The rail gun boomed again—the sound of the projectile wrenching through tank armor scraped through the air. Joshua and I had moved to the treeline of a nearby forest where we would stay for a day until Amcorp sent a hovering transport.
The memory faded as my eyes creaked open—I was tangled in a blanket that I must have gotten from my bed, laying on the empty cybernetic socket where my arm had been. I found my mobile under a takeout container on the floor. It displayed six eighteen as the current time. I took the cybernetic arm from the floor and jabbed it into the socket, twisting the mechanism to lock it in place.
I put my dirty clothes back on and took up the bag with the LEA uniform, opening my mobile to dial Devin's number. My call had woken him but he listened, groggy and muttering. I told him that I was collecting on what he owed me and gave him a set of instructions. He had some questions for me, but I didn't answer them.
When I reached the street level, I found a secluded alleyway and pulled a dumpster over to block the entrance. My mobile scanned the area for cameras. The search returned negative and I set to changing into the LEA uniform. I clicked my mobile onto the belt and holstered the rail pistol where an Agent sidearm would have been. I pulled the helmet on, checking the joints for seals—they all checked out. A taxi came when I called for it and I told the driver to take me to the spaceport. He insisted that I needn't pay him, but I settled the balance by inserting one of Tara's cred sticks into the data port.
The New Independence spaceport is on the edge of the dome where the glass meets the city structure. The entrance is a long tunnel with lights and screens and ads ru
nning the length of it. At its finish, is the landing platform where the transport ship sits like a cruise liner. It's body is a fuselage the color of rice paper with a rounded nose, coated in a thick black heat shield. Short wings branch from the body in two sets, the shorter wings at the front.
The tunnel was empty but for a security guard dressed in a gray jumpsuit, his eyes fixed on a nearby screen panel in the curved wall. I waited there for some time, crossing my arms over my chest and occasionally pretending to check my mobile.
A black speck appeared from the shadows of the nearby freeway off-ramp. As it came closer, it passed under a streetlight, the metallic coating along its length shining for a moment beneath it. It was the same shape as an Agency car, the long gentle slant to the hood with the square back and the short spoiler. It seemed that Agent Connolly had managed to get a unmarked patrol to deliver him.
The car stopped at the curve and opened a door, letting a figure with a long granite-colored coat step onto the street. He closed the door and the car sped away, taking the circuit back up to the freeway. As he came closer, I recognized his face from the video and I walked down the steps to meet him.
“Agent